The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is aware of 2,876 reports involving vehicles with unique VINs from Honda owners alleging inadvertent activation of the Collision Mitigation Braking System. The federal watchdog asked American Honda Motor Co. for more details about said complaints, with the automaker indicating that it's aware of 1,991 reports potentially related to the aforementioned condition.
Collision Mitigation Braking System is Honda vernacular for automatic emergency braking, which isn't mandatory in the United States of America. This incredibly useful feature will be mandatory on all new vehicles sold in the European Union beginning May 2024, and the United States could follow suit by decade's end. The National Transportation Safety Board advocates for AEB to become standard on commercial vehicles as well.
Turning our attention back to the NHTSA's probe, the federal agency is aware of 112 injuries and 47 crashes or fires related to inadvertent automatic emergency braking events. The reports allege that activation occurs while driving with no apparent obstacle in the vehicle's forward path. It's quite curious, to say the least…
American Honda Motor Co. is trying to downplay the defect with the following explanation: "Some customers possibly had an inadequate understanding of the CMBS and its limitations." Considering that AEB is a self-explanatory feature and that AEB should not activate with no obstacle in front of the vehicle, the Japanese automaker is blatantly insulting the consumer's intelligence.
Dealers who inspected subject vehicles could not reproduce the condition. Previously a preliminary evaluation, the engineering analysis opened by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration aims to assess the scope, frequency, and safety-related consequences of inadvertent automatic emergency braking activation in Honda vehicles.
Photo: Honda
How many and which vehicles? That would be 2,997,604 examples of the 2017 to 2022 model year Honda CR-V and 2018 to 2022 model year Honda Accord, including their hybrid siblings. Can you imagine this investigation turning into a three-million-vehicle safety recall? Even if the remedy turns out to be as simple as a software update for the AEB system's electronic brain via the OBD II port, three million software updates require an awful lot of labor hours.
As you probably guessed from the model years, the subject vehicles have been replaced by new generations. The first one to be redesigned was the CR-V, with 2023 model year production for the North American market kicking off in the fall of 2022. The Accord followed suit in January 2023.
The CR-V is Honda's best-selling vehicle in the United States of America, having moved 361,457 units last year compared to 434,943 examples of the Toyota RAV4. As for the Accord, the four-door sedan is doing pretty good as well. American Honda Motor Co. reported 197,947 deliveries in 2023, whereas the segment's favorite sedan remains the Toyota Camry, with 290,649 sales under its belt.
For model year 2024, the CR-V starts at $29,500 and the CR-V Hybrid at $34,050 (sans destination charge). Slotted above the Civic, the Accord is either $27,895 for the 1.5-liter turbocharged I4 or $32,895 for the Atkinson-cycle hybrid powertrain.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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